It's Just Better Fresh!

MMMMmmmmm... fresh lettuce from the garden, fresh cherry tomatos picked over the weekend, cucumbers straight off the vine.  There is absolutely nothing better than (a) eating fresh garden veggies untouched by any other human hands but me and my wonderful hubby and (b) being able to feed my family from the backyard garden.  The photos here are from earlier this summer.  The
trellis is covered and I have some rogue tomato plants that have turned out to be my best producers.  I need to upload some more current photos, but you can see from the photos that it was just a modest size garden ... and we've eaten from it so often this summer.  Salads and homemade (whole-wheat) fresh bread have been the #1 favorite around here!  How cool to be able to produce most of what you need in such a small space. 

Speaking of Bread: The WonderMill worked beautifully right out of the box and the bread turned out pretty good, but didn't rise as much as previous loaves.  I think its because the flour was so warm after coming out of the mill.  Now, I know it would have cooled down, but I've been using my regular store-bought flour out of the fridge with my yeast.  So I'm thinking that my warm, fresh-milled flour (jeez! that just sounds good-for-you doesn't it!?) may have had a negative effect on my cold yeast.  I plan to mill my next batch Saturday, then cook Sunday morning and see if that puts me back to normal.  Same great texture and taste, though -- just not as 'tall' as I prefer.  Live and learn.  Back to the garden.

As much as I'm enjoying my visits to the garden, they have become dramatically reduced now that I'm back to the school-grind.  However, I am anxious for it to get cooler ... I've been tossing around the idea of 'cold-framing' some of my beds for cool weather crops.  The thought of Fresh cabbage for my M-I-L's cole slaw in December is just too delicious.  As the season winds down I'm going to focus any photos, videos, or posts on winding up the summer garden and moving onto cold-frame gardening.  This is truly one of the blessing of living in the South: a long growing season.

Maiden Voyage of my new WonderMill

I've been making homemade bread for the last few months now.  I have a good 'clean' recipie, but have been using store-bought flour until I felt like I'd really gotten the hang of this process.  Well ... the bread is GOOD if I do say so myself.  So why mess with perfection?  To achieve higher perfection of course!

We want to be self-sufficient and have a store of supplies that can meet our needs with some extra.  However, we don't want to be consuming gobs of kilowatt hours freezing everything.  One of the ways we are adopting (thanks again to all those other homestead bloggers) is buying wheatberries in bulk and grinding our own flour on an as-needed basis.

I have finally used up all my store-bought flour.  Today is the day I put my WonderMill in service and bake the weekly bread batch.  I. AM. SO. EXCITED!  Hubby suggested I video the process (and I just might) and post a YouTube link.  Its a thought -- but I'm a little nervous about getting too far into the blogging/posting world before I really understand it well.  Thank goodness for a teenage son -- he'll have loads of information I'm sure. 

So -- I'll post a bit more after I go through the whole process.  Unfortunately, the paying job requires some attention right now.  Wish me luck!

First Blog + First Post = Writer's Block

What do you write for a first post?  I could go on at length about who I am and where I came from (or how I wound up here)... but those stories seem a bit to personal for a first encounter.  Maybe a simple introduction is all that's called for here.

I'm a teacher in Walton County Georgia -- high school social studies (and NO -- I don't coach!)  My husband and I have been married 2 wonderful years, although we've know each other since our own high school days some 30 years ago.  We live in a suburb dotted with all types of farmland and subdivisions and local 'big box' shopping centers -- although, sadly, we couldn't sustain a Starbucks.  One child at home ... one off and grown with a child of her own.

We've decided to build a homestead on our property up in northeast Georgia, about an hour from here.  Trouble is: we have no money, no building skills, have never worked on a farm, and -- for now -- I'm working here ... not there.  Not exactly a knapsack full of experience, but not exactly insurmountable odds.  We're devouring everything we can find on homesteading and have a fairly successful backyard garden experiment growing at the moment.  We're gathering information and trying our hand at whatever we can afford to do that is allowable in our neighborhood. 

For the time being, this blog will contain thoughts, information, and the events of our experiements.  I know there are a lot of other homestead blogs out here in the internet world.  I know because I've been reading you all for the last year or more and am stealing utilizing all your good ideas.  I hope some of you tag along with us as we design a self-sufficient, mostly organic, debt-free homestead that feeds our bodies and enriches our souls.